


sate

by iniquiticity



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Completely Fabricated Headcanons, Ficlet, Gen, Prompt Fill, The Hungering City
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-15 00:01:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 743
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29799882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iniquiticity/pseuds/iniquiticity
Summary: Prompt: another power coming to Astrid. warlockish. there are other ways to get what you want.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 8





	sate

**Author's Note:**

> [thanks to cal for this prompt.](https://twitter.com/caltracat/status/1362937116456411140) short but i liked it, so makes it to ao3.

Dreams were dangerous. The Assembly provided potions to vollstrecker, so that their collective rest was dreamless, but Astrid was on assignment, and it had gotten more complicated than she'd anticipated.

Usually the dreams were predictable. Old marks, asking her how she felt. Graduation night, with her mother and father vomiting and choking around the dinner table. Bren, more often these days, with fire in his eyes and spewing from his mouth. Nebulous hands reaching out to tear her flesh away.

There were exercises to combat such things, of course. She was a master at them. To wake up and get one's blood flowing, remembering the power, the skill, the reality of one's body.

This dream ---

This dream, a different one. This dream with a setting of an endless night in the background. Not quite the night sky - no moons or stars to speak of. An enormous vastness.

She was there. She was in a city, in a tall, tall tower. The room felt warm, suffused with a humidity that reminded her of breath. The walls were soft, and shifted slightly, as if the tower itself breathed. Where there should have been arrow slits were long, narrow mouths, each with a window-pane of transparent teeth. Sometimes the teeth opened and she could see out into that forever. Sometimes they snapped shut and she envisioned, with jealousy, how prey would have been torn between them.

There were nine sides to the tower and above each window mouth was a red eye, and they stared at her. The windows spoke with a symballant hiss, and not all quite at the same time, as if they echoed from one wall to the next.

A dreamer, the walls said, though what it sounded more like was:

_ adreameradreameradreameradreameradreameradreameradreameradreameradreamer _

She wished for her knife and it was there, the leather-wrapped handle comfortable in her grip, the hook of the tip, the slight serrations along the blade, the carved runes along it.

The windows smiled, stretching outside their sills. The room seemed to warp around them.

We can see what you want ( _ whatyouwantwhatyouwantwhatyouwant _ ), what you dream of ( _ dreamofdreamofdreamof _ ). Beautiful ( _ beautifulbeautifulbeautifulbeautiful _ )

"This is my dream," she announced to the wall, "Not yours."

She reached out with her empty hand and the mouths became window-shaped again. The slight pulsing of the walls stilled.

Yes. ( _ yesyesyesyesyesyyes _ )

Not the windows this time The voice was in the humid air she breathed, taking it into her. Caressing her ears. She shivered at the thought; with another burst of focus she required herself not to breathe, not to hear.

You can make your dreams come true ( _ truetruetruetrue _ ). how lovely ( _ lovelylovelylovelylovely _ ) they are.

It should not have been so tempting and so believable, and yet.

A blink and the top of the tower unfolded like an opening fist. The great vast nothingness was all around her. The floor twitched, rhythmic- ba-dump. ba-dump, ba-dump- but it was easy to keep her footing.

"You know what I dream of?" She asked the floor. A wall grew from it like a plant-stem, unfurling nine leaves, each veined with long rows of interwoven teeth. From each leaf a flower bearing a red eye.

yes ( _ yesyesyesyesyes _ ) we can help let us help feed your hunger ( _ hungerhungehungerhunger _ )

She took a step forward. A finger reached towards one of the flowers, and a leaf twisted, shooting forward. She snapped back; there was a narrow. red line at the tip of her finger where it had kissed her.

"What do you want in return?" she asked. A thought and she held in her hand a number of long grey strands which at the other end lead to a head of a jaundiced old man, which bled from the eyes and ears and mouth. She held it up and the whole flower strained towards her, unrecognizable other than the red of mouths and eyes.

NOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHINGNOTHING all the mouths screamed JUSTFEED YOURHUNGERHUNGERHUNGERHUNGER

She tossed them the head with easy strength of dreams. Blood spattered across the great nothingness. Nothing was left to hit the ground, not even bones.

She startled awake laughing, the inn room dark, cold. Not once had waking felt so alive, so much of returning to the living, so much wishing to return to her work. She felt uncharacteristically ravenous; luckily there were kitchens downstairs she could raid before the staff awoke.

_ sateyourhungersateyourhungersateyourhungersateyourhungersateyourhunger  _ said the voice from behind her ear. When she touched the skin there it was smooth, oddly untextured.

"We will," she murmured.


End file.
